


No Space Between Us

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Superstore (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Romance, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Rescue, Romance, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 09:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12296607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: For being in a tornado and building collapse, Amy and Jonah got off pretty easily. Here's a slice of life where they didn't, quite.





	No Space Between Us

**Author's Note:**

> Just kinda inspired by working cleanup after hurricane Irma.

“This is a mistake.” She cannot remember, later, if it's something she said out-loud or just kinda, sorta wished she had. It's the kind of thing she should have said, of course. It's what a married woman says when she kisses a man who isn't her husband. Not a quick, friendly peck, mind you, nor a theatrical smooch meant for kicks and giggles. This was a full on, deep, sweltering kiss with lots of tongue and—let's be honest, here—a little light, over the clothes petting in both directions. It's just not what you do, Amy told herself—tells herself—but she did it anyway. Somewhere, way up in heaven, her abuelita is pressing her fingers into her eyes and somehow, Amy just knows, her mother must have sensed what happened and suffered an immediate paroxysm of simultaneous anguish (adultery is a mortal sin, miha!) and exultation (but Adam is such... well, he is what he is, yes?).

Adam. That's the one person she hasn't really thought about during this... incident. It seems really selfish, at the end of all things. He's the one who'll be hurt by it, or would be if it was something she was going to ever, ever tell anyone about, up to and including the bathroom mirror. He's the injured party, her husband, her man. And yet... he's the last thing on her mind. It's understandable, sort of. A little bit, at least. She's just gone through a near death experience! A tornado ripped through her place of work and almost buried her and a friend (Friend, dammit, no... co-worker... that's better. Subordinate, even.) under a pile of rubble. The stress of it all could even explain away the kiss. Yeah, that's it. She smiles and is glad that Jonah can't see her, in the close, humid dark, because it's got to be the goofiest ass smile in the world. That's got to be it. The stress of it all...  
But it's bullshit and she knows it because the kiss still burns on her lips, if for no other reason, with the intensity of a harlot's brand. She wrinkles her nose. Harlot's brand... it sounds like a line of generic merchandise at Cloud 9's opposite in bizarro world. The poetry of it felt good—as good as the fucking kiss—but she cannot bring herself to truly embrace its sting of shame with his Old Spice cologne (Timber? Foxcrest? Some damn thing.) blazing in her nostrils and his long, lean body pressed hard against her.

She finally finds words that she knows she can say. “Jonah, are you all right?”

“I think so,” he mumbles. “Maybe.”

“I think you might be a hero,” she says.

“I think I'm a hero with broken ribs. And a broken back. And possibly a ruptured spleen.”

Worry tears and twists her gut. “Really? Cause all of those are bad but the last two are seriously super awful. I mean, the spleen thing can kill you.”

“No, no,” he says. “I'm just joking. Pretty sure it's not ruptured. Gonna feel like a dummy when I bleed to death five minutes after they drag us out of here, though.”

She smacks him softly in the side. “Ass.”

“Ow,” he says. “Ow, ow... it might not have been ruptured before but I'm pretty sure it is now.”

“Jonah...”

“No, Ames,” he says. His voice is muffled against her shoulder and hair. “Not ruptured. I do think I've got a cracked rib or two, though. It hurts like all hell to breathe.”

She finds herself feeling the same sentiment, although for radically different reasons. She'd have suffered flaying, burning and hanging out one-on-one with Marcus for ten hours straight before admitting it, though. At a loss for anything else to say, she aims at comforting. Amy has been a mom for a pretty good little while, after all, and she's gotten good at the whole consoling in a hopeless situation thing (like having your first pimple on the night of your middle school's most important dance and you will literally die, right this minute, if it doesn't get better) and maybe, just maybe, she'll make him feel better. “It's okay,” she says, “s'okay.” Small, sweet, soothing noises crawl from her to nest in his ears.

He doesn't respond for a long moment and for a longer one that stretches into eternity she fears the worst. Finally he says, “Pretty sure it's not okay. But thanks for trying.”

She laughs as much as feels appropriate in the circumstances. It isn't much but... laughter never hurt anything, right? Unless you have a broken rib that might, at this very instant, be lacerating a lung. It is hard, after all, for a natural born worry-wart to leave off the inclinations that she was born with and has honed through more than thirty years of careful practice.

Finally, after another long silence, he speaks again. They're so close that she feels his warm breath against her neck, smells the salad and vinaigrette he had for lunch. “I'll have to say, though, that as far as ways to get closer to somebody go... this one really kinda sucks.”

She ruminates on this for a while. Finally, after what feels like years in the darkness, the sound of tools scraping and striking sound around them. A man's muffled voice shouts. “Fire department! Call out!”

“We're right here!” she cries. “Right here! Like, five feet away from you—on your left and maybe down a little. Right here!”

“All right, ma'am,” the deep voice says. It sounds professional, reassuring and very, very tired. “We've got you. Is there anybody else with you?”

“My friend, Jonah. He's hurt.”

His voice becomes even more muffled. He's speaking into a radio, she guesses, mumbling something about two victims, unknown injuries, in sector three. He says to her, again, “Do you know what's wrong with him?”

“Broken ribs, I think, and he's kinda goofy acting... but that may just be normal. He's pretty goofy anyway.”

The radio voice again, and then to her, “Are you all right, ma'am?”

She cannot decide if she appreciates or is insulted that he is not calling her miss. “I think I am... just kind of a shock, you know? I mean, it's not every day that a building falls on top of you.”

“I know, ma'am. Just sit tight. We'll have you out in just a minute, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, but she knows that it's at least partially a lie. The rescue crew might remove them physically from this hole under the collapsed store, she's almost certain that they will, but a she's equally certain that she'll be leaving an important part of her down here forever.


End file.
